BLM Mulling More Than a Dozen 'Crown Jewels' for Wilderness Designation

Published: September 7, 2011

The Interior Department is considering more than a dozen areas for Congress to designate as wilderness, the highest level of protection for public lands, according to interviews with several state Bureau of Land Management offices.

But the total number and size of those wilderness areas will likely not be made public until Interior Secretary Ken Salazar submits a final report to Congress in mid-October, an agency spokeswoman said.

Among the areas considered ripe for new protections are more than 10,000 acres of wilderness study areas (WSA) near Helena, Mont., according to a BLM spokeswoman in the state.

The Sheep Creek and Sleeping Giant WSAs garnered the support of commissioners in Lewis and Clark County, said spokeswoman Mel Lloyd.

The Sleeping Giant area, a haven for mountain goats, includes a portion of the Lewis and Clark National Historic Trail and earned its name from the rocks that form the silhouette of a slumbering man on the Helena horizon.

The BLM's Nevada office has apparently forwarded conservationists' recommendations for new wilderness in the Gold Butte, Pine Forest and other areas to the national office, according to a letter this week from state Director Amy Lueders to Nada Culver of the Wilderness Society.

The agency's Colorado office, citing the support of local elected officials, forwarded recommendations for six WSAs, including Castle Peak, Bull Gulch, Browns Canyon, Hack Lake, Eagle Mountain and McKenna Peak, a spokesman in Denver said.

"The local input kind of jibed with the BLM's current management of these areas as WSA's," said spokesman Steven Hall.

In addition, BLM is also mulling "a few" areas in New Mexico for new wilderness designations, according to a spokesman in Santa Fe. A spokeswoman for BLM in Sacramento said the California office also recommended two or three areas that carry broad local support for congressional action, but their location and size was not disclosed. Two recommendations were forwarded by the Arizona office, said Ken Mahoney, a wilderness specialist for BLM.

At least two of the agency's state offices, Wyoming and Idaho, recommended no new areas for wilderness designation, citing a lack of support from local elected officials including Wyoming Gov. Matt Mead (R).

The recommendations come after BLM Director Bob Abbey in July asked state directors to identify areas of BLM's 250-million-acre estate where local stakeholders favor new wilderness, which bars industrial development and motorized travel to protect recreational opportunities and wildlife habitat (Greenwire, July 20).

Salazar on Oct. 15 will submit a list of "crown jewel" areas to Congress, which has sole authority to designate wilderness.

Salazar made a similar plea to lawmakers in late spring to craft a bipartisan omnibus wilderness and conservation bill, citing GOP proposals such as Idaho Rep. Mike Simpson's (R) Boulder-White Clouds and Rep. Darrell Issa's (R-Calif.) Beauty Mountain bills.

But it is unclear whether Congress will act on Salazar's recommendations as it tackles deficit reduction and 2012 appropriations. Republicans in the House have resisted putting new lands off limits to oil and gas, timber and mining developments, citing high unemployment in the West.

In some cases, local officials indicated that no new wilderness is needed.

"The governor did not submit any recommendation for lands through this process," said Renny MacKay, a spokesman for Mead.

In a letter to the BLM Wyoming state director, Don Simpson, Mead said BLM should first release 337,000 acres of WSAs that it has found unsuitable for wilderness designation before restricting uses on other lands. The agency manages more than half a million acres of WSA, which, by statute, must be protected for their roadless qualities.

"Our economy and way of life are intertwined with the public lands in our state," Mead said in the letter. "We rely on the concept of multiple uses."

MacKay said Mead has not taken a position on whether to designate the 34,000-acre Rock Creek area in the Bighorn National Forest as wilderness, a proposal that has garnered the support of local conservation groups and at least one major editorial board in the state. Mead is hoping to visit the area soon, MacKay said.

Kathleen Sgamma, director of government and public affairs at the Western Energy Alliance, said her organization did not submit comments on the BLM proposal, but that oil and gas operators have a proven record of returning drill sites to their original condition.

"Oil and gas is a small and temporary impact," she said. "We're seeing more and more lands that have prior or even active oil and gas activity being nominated for wilderness. If we can return the land to such a pristine state that it's being regarded as warranting wilderness protection, why not develop the energy first?"

But a large coalition of conservation groups in Colorado said new wilderness is the desire of a handful of counties, including Summit, Eagle, Pitkin and San Miguel, according to Suzanne Jones, regional director of the Wilderness Society's Central Rockies office.

More than a dozen groups in the Southern Rockies Conservation Alliance recommended wilderness for hundreds of thousands of acres of federal lands, including those in legislative proposals by Colorado Democratic Reps. Diana DeGette and Jared Polis.

The groups balked at the idea that oil and gas development is compatible with wilderness designations.

"Wilderness is a fragile resource," they wrote. "These values, once lost or compromised, are difficult, if not impossible, to restore."